"This is a very bad lad, sir,"remarked
the governor sternly; "he only came in yesterday, and to-day, while out
for exercise with the others, he must misconduct himself, and when the
warder reproved him, he must swear some horrible oath against him.
It is for that he his here. How many times have you been here, lad?"Lad (gulping desperately). "Three
times, sir!"Governor (sternly). "What!
speak the truth, lad."Lad (with a determined effort to
gouge tears of his eyes with his knuckles). "Four times, sir."Governor. "Four times!
and so you'll go on till you are sent away, I'm afraid. Can you read,
lad?"Lad (with a penitential wriggle).
"Yes, sir; I wish as I couldn't, sire."Governor. "Ah! why so?"Lad (with a doleful wag of his bullet-head).
"Cos then I shouldn't have read none of them highwaymen's books, sir; it
was them as was the beginning of it."

In the first half of the
nineteenth century in Britain, developments in printing and an increased
literacy rate amongst the general population encouraged the production
of publications aimed at a wide range of people, many of whom had little
money to spend on reading material and limited reading skills. Thus
arose the market for the penny dreadfuls. Penny dreadfuls were magazines
published on inexpensive paper with fairly simple but exciting stories
crammed together with often crude, vivid visuals seen at the time as being
just as important as the written material. In 1873, Hotten’s Slang
Dictionary defined them as "those penny publications which depend more
upon sensationalism than upon merit, artistic or literary, for success."
The term is also sometimes used to refer to the stories and serialized
novels themselves.

The serialized cheap publications
of the 1830s to 1850s are generally referred to as “bloods,” while the
“dreadfuls” followed soon after, with a touch less gore and more adventure.
Thomas Frost recalls that, Edward Lloyd, the first publisher to target
the semi-literate, working-class British readership, offered the following
explanation of his strategy for success: “Our publications circulate among
a class so different in education and social position from the readers
of three-volume novels, that we sometimes distrust our judgement and place
the manuscript in the hands of an illiterate person--a servant or a machine
boy for instance. If they pronounce favourably upon it, we think
it will do” (Frost).

The works that appeared in
the penny dreadfuls fall between and are indebted to the rough-hewn Newgate
Calendar stories and the more complex and more expensive gothic novels
of the period.1 It is primarily the sensationalism, terror,
and threat of violent action that unites these three types of literature.
Newgate
Calendar stories, however, lack the suspense of the other two.
Meanwhile, as Robert Morrison and Chris Baldick note, the authors of the
tales of terror published in Blackwood’s Magazine during the first
half of the nineteenth century “differ markedly from the Gothicists not
just in their concise scope but also in their sharper and more explicit
rendering of terror. . . . The usual tone in these stories is one
of clinical observation (although without the customary detachment) rather
than of genteel trepidation, and for the most part the terrors are unflinchingly
‘witnessed’,
not ambiguously evoked” (xv).

While most of the dreadful
pieces were published by “hack” writers working for next to nothing, a
number of respected authors also contributed to the magazines, just as
the impact of the dreadfuls can be found in works by Mary Elizabeth Braddon,
Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Bram Stoker, and others. Despite
the similarities, the cheaper materials appear to have drawn a notably
larger audience than either gothic novels or the sensation novels whose
popularity peaked in the 1860s. Dreadfuls existed as a major form
of popular literature for much of the nineteenth century.

Peter Haining has defined
the struggle between good and evil as the common factor of all dreadfuls.
“While many a reader might have observed a certain flexibility in his own
moral code,” he writes, “in the heroes and heroines of the penny publications
this was not only inexcusable, but also unthinkable” (14). This claim
is basically accurate, although of course readers did not have a unified
moral code with which they measured the heroines and heroes, leaving room
for ambiguity. As with gothic works, when consuming dreadfuls, one
often develops an attraction to or even compassion for the villain.
The excitement of their adventures is utter escapism. Highwaymen
are especially seductive, often using flattery, charm, and their dashing
good looks as tools in crime. Conversely, the good guy on occasion
is so flatly righteous that one suspects that readers might have had some
difficulty in sympathizing with this unattainable ideal. The simple
plot of good versus evil may have been a standard expectation but, as the
allure of the criminals and their lifestyles suggests, other values and
interests were also affirmed in the characters’ various moral standards,
classes, genders, sexualities, races, ethnicities, and careers.

A major part of the anxiety
voiced by James Greenwood (quoted above), Edward Salmon, and others regarding
the popularity of the dreadfuls was based in the fact that a distinct majority
of the readership consisted of children and young adults, especially males.
In 1870, the Forster’s Education Act had made elementary education compulsory
for all children. However, as Kevin Carpenter has noted, few books
for children were available at this time and libraries attentive to young
readers did not appear for decades (6). Meanwhile, most of the penny
dreadful publications were aimed directly at this audience, with the hero
often being a virtuous boy or young man who finds himself trapped within
a dangerous and seedy community of adult criminals such as highwaymen or
pirates. The poor, young readers didn’t need libraries to consume
this material because, like “lemonade-stand” subversions of Mudie’s
monopolizing Lending Library, the youths would often establish clubs to
combine their incomes and purchase the publications (6).

Despite the narrative's standard
“good vs. evil” dichotomy, critics argued that the dreadfuls glorified
the subversion of cultural conventions by seducing working-class youths
toward crime, debauchery, or simply an unproductive, immoral lifestyle.
When Lord Shaftesbury warned the Religious Tract Society that the literature’s
influence was “creeping not only into the houses of the poor, neglected,
and untaught, but into the largest mansions; penetrating into religious
families and astounding careful parents by its frightful issues,” he depicted
the relation between the works’ and their readers as an aggressive infiltration
by alien forces (qtd. in Dunae). However, just as Dracula cannot
enter any home uninvited, the middle-class interest that Shaftesbury acknowledges
reveals that the dreadfuls responded to instabilities in the foundation
of the Victorian image of moral rectitude. Needs and desires felt
by members of the middle-class were not being addressed by the literature
and art sanctioned by the dominant moral voice, and so these people turned
to the dreadfuls for pleasurable fulfillment. And we, as readers,
can turn to characters such as the Blue Dwarf, Starlight Nell, Spring Heel'd
Jack, and Tyburn Dick to gain a better understanding of the diverse needs
and desires of the Victorians themselves.

FOOTNOTES

1. On the relation of penny dreadfuls to the gothic, see Michael
Anglo’s Penny Dreadfuls and Other Victorian Horrors.